Morning didn't come.
Not really.
The dorm just… brightened, as if someone dragged the exposure slider up too fast. Shadows dissolved before they could stretch. The world felt flattened, rendered, unfinished.
The MC jolted upright. His heart hammered like it was trying to warn him. The Silent One was already awake, sitting cross-legged on his bed, staring at the wall with that eerie stillness he carried like a second skin.
For a while, they didn't speak.
Then the MC whispered, "It reset again… didn't it?"
The Silent One didn't nod or deny. His head tilted, listening to something only he could hear.
"You felt it," he murmured.
The MC swallowed. "Felt what?"
"The stitch."
It wasn't the answer he expected. "The… stitch?"
"You tore the memory. So it stitched itself up."
The MC stood, dizzy. "I don't understand."
"You will," the Silent One said quietly. "But not here."
He opened the door.
And the hallway beyond was wrong.
The corridor stretched both ways in perfect mirrored halves — posters doubled, cracks replicated, lights flickering in sync as if reflected against invisible glass.
The MC's breath hitched. "This wasn't here before."
"It was," the Silent One said. "You just weren't meant to see it yet."
The MC stepped forward. "Why can you see it?"
A rare strain crossed the Silent One's face, something like guilt.
"I'm not from your memory," he whispered.
"I was placed here. To keep it stable."
The MC froze. "Placed by who?"
"You're not ready for that answer." The Silent One pointed down the hall.
Where the mirroring broke, where reality flickered like a cheap animation —
a new crack glowed.
Smaller than before.
But alive.
"You have to choose," he said. "Follow the script… or break it again."
The MC stared at the crack. His throat tightened. "If I break it again… what happens?"
The Silent One stepped closer, voice dropping into something nearly mournful.
"The memory won't be the only thing that feels it this time."
The lights dimmed.
The crack pulsed.
The world inhaled.
And the MC stepped toward it.
---
The Break
The moment he moved, reality folded in on itself.
Not a tremor. A collapse.
Tiles rippled like water. The ceiling stretched into static. His vision split into misaligned layers — as if the world forgot how many dimensions it had.
His thoughts didn't feel like thoughts.
They felt like shards —
sharp, familiar, frighteningly intimate.
The kind of panic that doesn't ask permission, that wakes you up at 2 a.m. and sits on your chest.
The kind you recognize instantly, in that sickening way where you think:
Oh. It's you again.
The Silent One grabbed his wrist. "Don't touch it—!"
Too late.
His fingers brushed the crack.
The world screamed.
Sound wasn't sound anymore — it was the grinding of every memory he had ever tried to bury, rising like teeth from the dark.
The terrace.
The note.
The pills.
His mother's voice.
The staircase.
The bruises.
The silence.
Everything he had shoved down came flooding back all at once, a tidal wave collapsing inside his skull.
He dropped to his knees.
"Make it stop," he gasped. "Please — please — I can't—"
He had said that before.
Not here.
But into pillows, into locked bathrooms, into the quiet where nobody heard him.
The world tore open with him.
Windows melted.
Walls peeled like wet paper.
People froze mid-motion, faces blurring into featureless smears.
The sky stuttered.
The Silent One knelt and grabbed his shaking shoulders.
"Your mind is the core of this place," he said. "When you break—so does everything else."
"I didn't mean to—" the MC sobbed.
"You did. And that's okay."
But nothing was okay.
Cracks webbed across the ceiling. The floor buckled. The memory of a school dissolved into raw white static.
"I'm losing it," the MC whispered.
"You're not supposed to breathe here," the Silent One murmured.
He pulled the MC against his chest — grounding him, anchoring him.
"You just need to remember yourself."
---
The Collapse
The world couldn't hold anymore.
It buckled —
and shattered.
Everything disappeared.
No hallway.
No dorm.
No school.
No shape.
No sound.
Just a white void that stretched infinitely — a place outside of memory, outside of story, outside of anything that had rules.
The MC fell to his knees on nothing.
He shook so hard it hurt.
His hands covered his face even though there was nothing left to hide from.
"It hurts," he choked. "It hurts so much."
"I know," the Silent One whispered.
And for the first time, his voice sounded like breaking glass.
The void pulsed with the MC's breath — every panicked inhale dimming the world, every exhale warping it. Reality itself synced to his fear.
The Silent One pressed their foreheads together, gentle, almost reverent.
"Feel it," he murmured. "Don't run. Let it hit you. Let it settle."
"I'm scared."
"That means you're still here."
The MC clutched his shirt.
"I don't want to be alone."
"You're not."
Simple words.
Devastating words.
Words that made something inside him loosen, painfully.
Slowly — painfully slowly —
his breath steadied.
And with it, the void brightened.
White folded into color.
Color folded into shape.
Shape folded into walls, tiles, posters, bedsheets.
The world re-stitched itself.
And he found himself on the dorm floor, still shaking, the Silent One beside him, eyes soft with exhaustion.
"You didn't destroy it," the Silent One said.
"You just forced it to be honest."
The MC swallowed hard. "Why does it feel like I've done this before?"
The Silent One looked away.
"Because you have."
"When?" the MC whispered.
A long, heavy silence.
"In the real world," the Silent One said quietly.
"And not even once."